


Your fingers entwined slowly with mine, and suddenly, life made sense

by mariamegale



Series: Call me 'sweetheart', please? [7]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Being In A Relationship And Not Realising, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, basically just dumb boys in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24167848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariamegale/pseuds/mariamegale
Summary: If you ask them later, which their friends all end up doing at one point or another, neither Babe nor Eugene can really answer the question of when it happened.They both have their own answers as to when they actually realised, and what they did with that. But as Eugene looks over at Babe, sharing a smile that's almost shy, he ends up shrugging and just says, "I don't know, it just kind of... Happened, I guess. Not very romantic, sorry."Then Babe kisses him with soft lips and their friends throw peanuts at them, but it doesn't matter.OR: A series of stories from within another series of stories, about a non-relationship in flux, and the very non-romantic parts they both remember in that moment.
Relationships: Babe Heffron/Eugene Roe
Series: Call me 'sweetheart', please? [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722178
Comments: 50
Kudos: 66





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't porn. Shocking, I know, right? Multi-chapter, too. Even more shocking.
> 
> You've been asking them to DTR. I'm not here to bring you that, just yet, but I am here to bring you some moments that mayhaps be building up to something, eventually. Who knows? It's in the stars.
> 
> thank you to my lovely lovely sar for the title to this, which i shamelessly took from a poem she sent the chat.
> 
> Content warnings in the end notes. <3

Contrary to what most people may think, Eugene Roe is a dreamer. He doesn’t like to talk about it, because it seems too much like an opening that he doesn’t want other people to exploit.

Gene believes there to be undeniable good in the universe — a balance that, as long as you do the right thing, will see you rewarded for the good and reprimanded for the bad. He believes every person to have it in them to listen to reason and logic, and that no one is ever so helplessly lost there is no longer any hope for them.

This is the compass that guides him through life, and there are few moments that have ever gotten him to question it. 

But the idea that he could take Babe to the grocery store and do Sunday shopping like two reasonable, sensible adults turns out to be one of these moments.

First, it takes twenty minutes to even convince the man to go. Eugene knew this going in — Babe has a very… Babe-like sense of priorities when it comes to what he thinks is and is not worth spending his time on, and going grocery shopping isn’t one of them.

However, they’ve been cooking together a lot lately and Eugene really wants to get Babe more involved with the food he eats. Gene isn’t exactly the best role model when it comes to good eating habits, but he is aeons ahead of Babe who didn’t know how to boil pasta when they first moved in together.

For a long time Eugene would just wordlessly put a second set of plates and cutlery out whenever he made dinner, and then that turned into Babe coming up with excuses to be in the kitchen while Gene cooked, and then to him just wordlessly watching, and then to Eugene giving him small tasks to help out and simultaneously teaching him the most basic of kitchen skills.

The first time he asked Babe to chop onions, they had ended up in the bathroom with the first aid kit. Gene had tirelessly reassured his roommate that no, he wasn’t going to lose a finger, but he’d probably get a pretty big scar out of it. After that and realising just how dire the situation was, he’d given Babe easier tasks like stirring pots and opening cans. 

The man wanted to learn, and that was the most important part. Babe wasn’t exactly a culinary prodigy, but he was earnest, and made careful but steady progress. Eugene still didn’t let him come anywhere near the process of gumbo making, but there were advancements being made.

Grocery shopping, though, was still firmly Eugene’s territory. Babe could be sent on errands but inevitably always came home with a minimum of three items not on the list and at least one that was a close proximity to what Gene had asked for, but not the same thing. It worked when he got rosemary instead of thyme, but not when he once came home with powdered sugar instead of cocoa.

(“They’re both sweet, I think, I don’t see what the problem is?” 

“Edward, it’s not even almost the same— never mind, I’ll just pick it up on the way home tomorrow.”

“Does that mean we’re not baking brownies today?”

“I’m afraid so, Heffron.”

Babe had clearly tried very hard not to cry. In the end Eugene had caved and made cupcakes instead.)

Anyway. What was the solution? Joint grocery shopping. It was the next reasonable step — sure, Babe kind of knew how to cook with things Eugene gave him, but he really should learn what those things truly were.

So Eugene had forced both of them out of the apartment, each with a backpack to carry their things back home with, and into their closest reasonably-sized supermarket. Then came problem number two.

Babe had insisted on getting a shopping cart instead of one of the hand-held baskets, and Gene hadn’t understood why until they collected one and Babe wasted exactly no time half-jumping, half-climbing into it. 

After taking a very deep breath and counting to ten, Eugene opened his eyes to find Babe staring back at him with pleading eyes, sitting cross-legged in the cart. They spent a few seconds in an optical stand-down, before Babe held the shopping list out in front of his face.

“I can read what we’re getting and you can just take us there. Also, keeping fragile stuff safe will be a lot easier if they’re just in my lap,” he had argued, and Eugene had conceded. The beaming smile Babe gave in return had made it feel worth the looks from their fellow shoppers.

That’s what got them to now, Eugene wheeling this oversized child around “the place where food lives,” trying to explain some things about shopping to his eager student.

“Always look at price per weight,” he says as they’re picking out tinned tomatoes. “If you look at these two, this one has a lower price per tin, but if you look at the amount of tomatoes you get for it, we’d actually end up paying less for this one. You with me?”

“Yeah,” Babe replies, crossing tomatoes off their list before being handed a few cans and stacking them at his feet. He’s actually doing a pretty good job at keeping his side of the deal, the lettuce and bread carefully balanced between his knees, and Eugene cannot deny the practicality of not having to hand-tug him away from the candy shelves. “So you should always go for the cheaper version, right?”

“Pretty much, yeah. What’s next?”

“Olives. Why are we getting olives?”

“Because we’re making pizza this weekend. Don’t shout,” Gene adds quickly when Babe lights up like a Christmas tree, sounding serious but unable to keep a responding smile off his own face. “Here’s another benefit of doing the grocery shopping: if there’s anything you want on yours that isn’t already on the list, you can tell me now and we’ll get it.”

“I swear to be reasonable,” Babe promises, scanning through the list while Eugene pulls him over to the olive shelf. They pass by a mother and child, the four-year-old sitting in its cart waving at Babe where he sits in his. Gene smiles at them, ignoring the skeptical look the mother gives the two of them.

Honestly, he is surprised by how little he cares about what they look like. If you’d told any past version of Eugene that he’d one day be carting another grown man around a grocery store, he’d probably gone into a lawyers office and recorded an “in case of”-video asking to be put in a mental institution should that ever happen.

Now, though, it really doesn’t seem that bad. Sure, people are staring, but what’s the problem? Babe is having a good time, Eugene is enjoying their banter, they really are getting a lot of shopping done and every now and then he’s treated to a bright smile that makes his stomach flutter.

The old version of himself didn’t know what he’d be missing out on.

“Eugene,” Babe asks too-casually, and he’s pulled out of his thoughts.

“Yes, Edward?”

His roommate pinches his lips together, puts the shopping list down and slowly takes a breath before saying, “I notice that there isn’t any pineapple on this list.”

Oh no. “No, there isn’t, Edward,” Eugene responds in a level tone. He casually picks up a jar of olives and hands it over, Babe taking it without breaking their eye contact.

“May I suggest we add pineapple to the list?”

“That depends,” he says casually, leaning on the handle of the shopping cart carefully. With Babe planted in it, there’s no risk it’ll tip over, but Eugene would rather not slide face-first into the floor while trying to win a discussion. “On what you’d plan on putting that pineapple with. Ham is fine, Heffron. Shrimp, mushrooms and pepperoni are not.”

Babe scrounges up his nose like he’s debating on whether or not he wants to argue Gene’s point, but after a few seconds of tense silence, he settles for just letting out a long breath and looking down at the shopping list in his hands. “Next up is corn,” he sighs sadly. “I guess my dream pizza just isn’t to be.”

Eugene rolls his eyes, leans back up and carts the sulking boy through the next couple of items. He explains the difference between sweet corn and normal corn, Babe nodding solemnly and looking longingly out into the air like he’s envisioning some perfect world where he’s allowed to ruin food without anyone putting the breaks on him.

Eventually Gene feels himself give in — never in a million years will he ever admit out loud to starting to feel actually guilty about it, though — and begins to pull them towards the other side of the store.

“What are you doing?” Babe asks, his despondency apparently forgotten under the curiosity of what this new development is.

“I’m taking you to the cereal aisle,” Eugene says, not looking back at whatever face Babe is making. “If I let you pick out whatever you want, will you stop being mad at me?”

There’s no answer, and when Eugene looks back Babe is just nodding his head enthusiastically. He looks way too goddamn happy for just picking out breakfast food, but it gets Eugene laughing anyway. This creates a veritable happiness feedback loop, both of them grinning once they reach the cereal. 

“Don’t,” Eugene hurries to say when Babe looks like he’s about to jump out of the cart, the groceries piled up around him be damned. “Just say what you want and I’ll get it for you.”

It doesn’t take too long for Babe to make his pick, and Gene isn’t even surprised when he gets down two cartons of Star Wars cereal with Yoda on the front. He doesn’t so much as shake his head when he gets a grin and a happy little “thank you!” in response.

“It’s not baby Yoda, which is a travesty, but it’ll do,” Babe says, starting what will inevitably become a ramble, and Eugene plucks the shopping list out of Babe’s hand to just finish up the shopping on his own. 

Babe has doodled two little smiling stick figures holding hands in one of the upper corners, with the actual corner being turned into a sunglasses-wearing sun smiling at them, sending out rays made out of small stars and hearts. One of the stick figures has short dark hair sicking straight up and the other is wearing a stick-figure imitation of a puffy jacket, with “Very Good Taste” written next to it with a small arrow. It’s unclear whether this refers to the jacket or the first stick figure.

Eugene almost stumbles over his own feet. 

Sometimes he wonders if he’s a star of the Truman show, with his cohost being played by the result of some kind of science experiment of putting a child into the body of an adult. That metaphor disintegrates immediately, though, because Eugene looks down at the man in his shopping cart rambling on about baby Yoda and is suddenly slapped in the face with the urge to kiss him.

Then Babe looks up at him with a confused face and asks “Gene, why have we stopped?”

And now he’s very glad that he doesn’t have Babe’s proclivity for blushing, because Eugene’s entire face suddenly gets very, very warm. They’re standing in the middle of the aisle, and a man is nudging past them with an annoyed expression. Gene sends him an apologetic look and moves them out of the way, looking back down at their list in an attempt to come up with an excuse.

“Uh,” He gets out, and Babe is frowning more for every second. _Get your shit together, Eugene, what the fuck is wrong with you?_ “I was just trying to remember if we have enough toilet paper at home. Did you check before we left? I forgot.”

“No, I didn’t,” Babe says slowly, eyeing Eugene up and down carefully. “You sure you okay, Gene?”

“Yeah, sorry, just got stuck in my own thoughts a bit,” Gene responds with what he hopes is a reassuring smile, rolling them towards the hygiene section. “Now, I think you’ve already learned this lesson, but when it comes to saving money, toilet paper—“

“Isn’t the place to skimp out,” Babe finishes his sentence with a roll of his eyes. “I know, you’ve told me a million times.”

“Well, if you hadn’t spent three months making the same mistake, maybe I wouldn’t have had to,” Gene says and Babe groans in front of him. 

“Jesus Christ, Gene, it’s been years. Yeah, I was a dumbass when I first moved out, I get it. I won’t do it again. Let it go.”

It’s a comfortable argument, discharged after years of bantering, and they slip easily into it. Eventually they get the last of the items on their list, Babe sitting under a small pile of stuff, and Eugene pulls them up to the cash register. 

“You unload, I’ll start packing?” He suggests.

“Yeah, sure,” Babe agrees, tossing a loaf of bread on the band before pulling his backpack off after a short struggle and handing it over. “Get me a little closer, please?”

Gene nudges the cart, and Babe, up to the register and shoots the cashier a smile as he walks past him to the bagging area. The cashier looks like he wants to say something, but also like he just wants to go home and apply for a new job, and Eugene feels nothing but pity for the man. 

The cashier on the other side of the aisle, however, doesn’t seem so inclined. She stares at Babe, and then Eugene, and then back at Babe, who is currently trying to wiggle a can of beans out from where they’ve gotten stuck under his knee. 

“What are you two doing?” She asks incredulously, and Eugene suddenly realises that maybe, just maybe, having adults in the carts may be against some kind of policy. 

But Babe, ever the pragmatic guy, just looks up at her with a smile. “I’m helping,” he says. “Usually Gene is the one to do all the grocery shopping, but he convinced me to join so I am. I tend to run off, though, so this was easier.”

“But you’re a grown-ass man,” the woman spits out, like she’s talking to a stupid child, which annoys Eugene. _So what?_ a part of him wants to say, because really, who has a problem with this? The cart can obviously handle Babe’s weight, and it’s not like they’re being rowdy or bothering anyone. For all she knows, Babe could have an injury or disability, not that it even matters because there’s no excuse for being unpleasant.

In Gene’s mind, she should mind her own business, because there’s just showed up a woman in her line who looks like she’d rather just pay for her salad and go than have to listen to this person be rude to a kind boy just having a good time. 

But before Eugene can say anything to get her to back off, Babe responds instead. “I’m aware, but thank you for the compliment, ma’am! Gene, do you remember if we got two or three tins of tomatoes? I wanna make sure I get all of them up at the same time.”

“We got four, Babe,” Eugene responds flatly, still frowning at the other cashier who is shaking her head and pursing her lips, but at least goes back to focusing on her own customers.

“Well, it’s a good thing I checked, then,” Babe says with a smile to their own clerk. “I don’t know what I’d do without him, honestly, I probably wouldn’t even remember to put my shoes on before I went outside.”

Eugene ends his rather one-sided glare-off with the lady and packs up their things instead. They pay and leave without further incident, Babe staying in the cart with their stuff until Eugene manages to convince him that for all the tugging he’s done today, it really is Babe’s job to put the cart back in its place. 

He lights a cigarette while he waits, frowning softly at nothing until he feels a hand come up on his shoulder and Babe’s smiling face comes into view.

Gene is quiet on their walk back home, Babe resuming his earlier one-man discussion of the merits of baby Yoda vs. literally any other Star Wars character. It’s ten minutes of this before the man sighs and looks over at Eugene.

“For crying out loud, Gene, will you let it go?” He says in a voice that’s clearly fed up with his sulking roommate. “Jesus Christ, when did you get this easily offended?”

“She was rude, okay?” Eugene retorts, not quite looking at Babe. He knows he’s being ridiculous, but there still is something not sitting right with him and it’s making him annoyed. Gene is not a petty person and he doesn’t like being exposed to feelings of pettiness. “She was being rude to you for no reason, and that… I don’t like that. She had no right.”

Babe is quiet for a little while, and Eugene eventually looks over to find him smiling fondly despite his outburst five seconds earlier. “I’m okay, though,” Babe says softly. Gene’s cheeks are suddenly warm again, not getting any cooler when a hand finds his own and squeezes his fingers. “Always am when I got you there to protect me.”

“Didn’t protect you, though,” he mutters back, but squeezes Babe’s hand in return before they let go of each other. His fingers twitch at the loss.

“No, but you could have,” Babe laughs, and the unhappy feeling in Eugene’s chest is starting to loosen up. “That’s all I need to know. You’ll always be my knight in shining armour, Eugene Roe.”

It’s said jokingly enough, and Eugene gladly takes the opening to start another bout of banter. It’s comfortable, walking home in the afternoon sun, bickering friendly with Babe over anything and nothing. Soon enough Gene forgets what he was even upset at.

———

Later, Eugene half-sneaks into his room while Babe is putting away the last of their groceries. He’d found the shopping list with Babe’s doodle on at the bottom of his bag, and something silly and ridiculous and oddly protective had jumped in his chest. 

Above his desk, Gene has a cork board with various bits of nostalgia and memorabilia pinned to it. There are a bunch of photos — of his parents and grandparents and cousins, tons of their friends and Lipton’s dog and of Renee, him and Spina when they graduated their first year. His acceptance letter is there, as is the first letter his grandma sent after he moved up, and a small drawing of him and Babe that Shifty had softly slipped him without saying anything when they were all out together once.

There’s a bunch of other stuff, too, but for now Eugene doesn’t muse on it, just pulls the shopping list off of the small pad and pins it to an empty space near the bottom. It fits in well, and he looks at it for a few seconds before Babe shouts at him from the kitchen.

“Hey, do not leave me with the last of this shit!”

Eugene rolls his eyes but goes out to help with the insurmountable task of putting spices into the cabinet, not realising he’s smiling until Babe comments on it teasingly. Eugene stares at his roommate for a few seconds, Babe grinning back at him.

“Oh, shut up,” is all he can think to say. He kisses Babe’s smug laugh off of his face, smiling against his stupid, pretty face as a pair of hands on his waist pull them closer together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS:
> 
> ... don't think there are any? No seriously this is so soft, I think the worst is a mildly rude encounter with a poor sod cursed with working in retail. And talks of pineapple on pizza, I guess.
> 
> Let me know if my goofy ass missed anything. Hope you enjoy! <3
> 
> * * *
> 
> [ I'm here on tumblr. Come say hi if you want! <3 ](https://mariamegale.tumblr.com/)
> 
> A/N: god help me finish this multi-chapter fic. I haven't decided how long it's gonna be yet, but I think about 3-5 chapters. I may still write smut but it'll probably go up on my tumblr if I do before this is finished, because we really need to get these two boys on the fucking feelings train and off the boinking train for a lil bit.
> 
> As always, I love and cherish you all so unbelievably much. Thank you forever and always <3


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eugene must have spent the day cleaning, because the flat is neat and tidy, smelling like that pine soap he uses to mop the floor. The afternoon sun is filtering in between their sheer curtains, and the stereo is playing that old jazz Gene is so fond of.
> 
> OR: A more or less normal Friday afternoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are about ten people I really should gift this series to, because you're getting me through this, but i will repay the debt with fluff and tons of hearts <3 <3 <3 
> 
> hope you enjoy <3
> 
> content warnings at bottom alwaysssss

Coming home on a Friday afternoon is the best thing Babe knows.

There’s something so unbelievably satisfying about knowing he has two free days ahead of him, and that he can sleep for however long he wants tomorrow. Also, Babe knows they’ll be making goulash tonight and he’s incredibly excited because this means he’ll be able to curl up around a bowl later and feel all cozy-ed up and well-taken care of.

That thought segways Babe into the true joy of coming home today, which is that he knows Eugene is going to be there. It’s been weeks since they actually had a weekend off together, but Gene worked his last shift for a while yesterday and had started his time off by crawling into Babe’s bed. 

Babe had been in it, half asleep because it was 11:30 PM and he had to get up early, but he had nonetheless gladly accepted a cuddle and a murmured promise from Eugene that he was “ _not leaving this spot until someone forces me to_.” 

A part of Babe has spent the day wondering if he was going to come home to find Gene had stuck to that, trying to beat down the image of Eugene waiting for him in bed with a stick because he had work to do, god damn it.

It turns out to not be the case, anyway, because Eugene is in the kitchen when Babe walks through the door. It’s hard to be disappointed though, because the air in the apartment is so mellow that he’s smiling the second he gets over the threshold. 

Eugene must have spent the day cleaning, because the flat is neat and tidy, smelling of the pine soap he uses to mop the floor. The afternoon sun is filtering in between their sheer curtains, and the stereo is playing that old jazz Gene is so fond of. 

Babe teases him for being an old man sometimes, between his taste in music and complete disinterest in most modern kinds of media (Babe doesn’t think he even knows how to turn a game console on). The thought to say anything of the like doesn’t cross his mind now, though, because he can hear Eugene moving about in the kitchen, singing along to Ella Fitzgerald in his low, sweet drawl.

He mustn’t have noticed Babe if he’s doing that, because for some reason Eugene doesn’t sing around people. It’s one of the biggest sorrows in Babe’s young life, because Gene’s voice is absolutely beautiful. He closes the door carefully, pulling his shoes and jacket off before moving quietly to the kitchen doorway. 

Gene has his back against the hallway, mixing something in a bowl, and Babe leans against the doorpost with a smile and closes his eyes. Chet Baker and Eugene get halfway through a song about falling in love before the latter goes quiet, leaving the first to continue on his own, and after a few seconds Babe hears a pair of footsteps walk up to him.

“Hey there. How long have you been home?” Gene asks him quietly, a pair of hand sneaking around Babe’s waist. He opens his eyes to find Eugene looking slightly embarrassed, and it’s the prettiest thing Babe has ever seen.

He presses their foreheads together, feeling the heat in Eugene’s face, and doesn’t feel guilty at all. “Long enough,” he says, breathing in their shared space. Gene smells of spices and his honey body wash and like home. “I wish you’d sing more often. It’s nice. You’re good.”

Eugene’s skin goes even warmer, and Babe complies the shy tilt of Gene’s jaw with a kiss. “Welcome home,” is all he responds with, not recognising the compliment. Babe decides not to push it further.

“Thank you,” he murmurs between kisses instead, cupping Eugene’s jaw with one hand. “How’s your day been? What are you making?”

“It’s been good, and just a rub. Figured it’d be nice to have a bit of marinade on the meat, yeah?” Eugene says, seeming more preoccupied with Babe than with what he was doing, and Babe doesn’t have any plans to change that.

It’s not leading up to anything, their lazy exchange of kisses, but Babe still feels his heart beat in his throat for some reason. Eugene sighs happily when Babe nudges his mouth open, one hand carding through his short hair, and he tastes like coffee and chocolate and something just so profoundly Gene-like that Babe can’t find a word for it without it sounding gross.

He enjoys every second of it, the warm, gentle press of Eugene’s body against his and the way Gene’s thumbs are rubbing small circles into his waist. 

Eventually they break off with another few soft, chaste kisses, Babe going to take a shower to wash the work week off while Eugene finishes up his pre-cooking. They then make dinner in no particular hurry, with a lot of unnecessary touches as Babe tries to coax Gene into at least humming along to the music. 

It’s easy and soft, Babe reading the recipe and Eugene giving him enough of tasks to make him feel like he’s contributing, but not so many he’ll ruin the whole recipe. Babe isn’t a good cook, he knows this, but Gene has never really commented on it. 

He appreciates that — it’s one thing to be bad at something, but he’s aware enough of it already that he doesn’t need other people pointing it out, thank you very much. Food was never a big deal in his family, the actual eating part of their dinners going by pretty quickly to give way for talking and sharing how their day had been. 

Babe misses it, sometimes, all of them being crowded around a table and chattering over one another. With Bella being away for school and both of his older brothers having their own families at this point, Babe and his little brother were the only ones usually there when he went to visit. It was nice, but just not the same, and he’d rather spend time with Johnny being just the two of them, without their parents’ slightly watchful eyes.

They were good parents, but parents nonetheless, and the sacred bond between older and younger siblings was reliant on being able to talk about shit they’d never tell their ma or dad about. It was just the way things were. Thanksgiving was only two months away, though, and Babe looked forward to it almost achingly.

Anyway. Moving in with Eugene had been a bit of a culture shock, to be completely frank. Food was integral to Gene’s life in a way Babe didn’t even know was possible, especially not for a person who descended into borderline starvation mode when he got stressed.

But that was probably the thing, wasn’t it? To Gene, food is comfort, synonymous with time off, with slow evenings and long mornings and good company. Eugene cooks when he is happy, and when he is sad, and when he got good news or misses his family. 

You could almost always tell how Eugene was feeling based off the state of their fridge, and Babe was slowly starting to learn the tells of when Gene crossed the line from “busy” to “near collapse” in terms of exhaustion level; number one was just keeping track of leftovers in the fridge. On any good day, they had at least four lunch boxes in there. If there weren’t any left it meant Eugene hadn’t been cooking, whether Babe had been there to see it or not, because for some reason he always made way too much food.

This was a sign of stress in two ways: One, Gene hadn’t found enough peace of mind to spend time in the kitchen. Two, Babe knew that just not having food at home made Eugene anxious, which was probably the answer to the question of the large portions mentioned above.

Things were really bad if they started running low on actual ingredients. A few months back Gene had cried because the fridge was empty, as an emotional last resort from a combination of too long shifts, a particularly cold couple of nights and not having eaten anything substantial for a week.

Babe had almost started crying too, just from the stress of seeing his roommate shaking with sobs on the sofa, and made the world's worst grilled cheese sandwiches in a panicked attempt at making Eugene feel better. It had worked, but barely, the promise that they’d go to the store first thing next morning probably a much more effective measure.

Determined to within an inch of his life to never have that happen again, Babe has since taken it upon himself to keep meticulous track of their food supply and Eugene’s cooking schedule, updating their shopping list daily and luring Gene to make dinner with him through an endless stream of kisses.

Judging by the fact it had been at least two months since he’d come home to find Eugene staring into space, overwhelmed after days of too much work and too little proper food and sleep, he was doing a pretty good job of taking care of his roommate. 

(He’d worked out a system for dealing with those moments, too, for emergency situations.

It mainly involved making chicken soup — the one thing he actually could cook on his own, which was apparently weird for reasons Babe didn’t understand — making Gene take a bath and then bundling him up in Babe’s bed with no TV or phones. 

Babe would do what he did best, which was to ramble. About his day, about what their friends were up to, about work and movies and whatever else he could think of. Eventually Gene would go from quietly listening to chirping in thoughts to eventually being able to hold his side of a conversation, at which point Babe would make him eat some soup before going back to cuddling the shit out of him until they fell asleep.

Babe was glad he’d now found ways to stop Gene from going that far, although he did miss the thank you-blowjobs he would wake Babe up with afterwards.)

But now was cooking time, not thinking about waking up to Eugene kissing his way down Babe’s chest and stomach, slowly— _Cooking time. It’s cooking time, Edward. Get your mind out of the gutter._ Okay.

He pulls himself out of it and looks over at where Eugene is stirring peppers into the pot. His brow is furrowed with focus in a way Babe doesn’t understand the need for, but he watches it with incredible fondness anyway. Food might be important to Eugene in a way Babe doesn’t understand, but Eugene is important to Babe, so he will make as much of an effort as he can.

“What’s next, Edward?” Gene asks, and Babe scrambles to pull the recipe up. 

“Uh, I think we just let it simmer, Doc.” He hands his phone up to let Eugene double-check, and feels a sense of pride when it’s confirmed that Babe didn’t miss anything. 

They clean up quickly between the two of them, and within ten minutes Babe is free to relax and enjoy the best moment he knows of.

It’s Friday, early in the evening, the whole flat smelling clean and delicious from the pot gently bubbling on the stove. Eugene’s choice of slow music is still playing, the man himself leaned back on Babe’s chest, the two of them laying together on the sofa. Gene is reading, which makes Babe happy, because he only does that when he’s relaxed enough to be able to lie still for a long time.

He’s happy to just nuzzle into Eugene’s hair, surrounded by warmth and soft blankets, the sound of Billie Holiday and the turn of pages and the smell of food slowly cooking in the kitchen. Babe is feeling relaxed and unhurried, knowing this is just the first few hours of the weekend and that he has two whole days of nothing in front of him.

Babe presses a kiss to Gene’s temple, just to hear him hum in response. He can feel the press of Eugene’s back against his chest as he breathes, the slow movement almost like a cradle rocking him into a very deep sense of comfort and security.

There’s a small smile on Eugene’s face, the one he gets when he’s very happy, and Babe doesn’t know why he’s happy right now but he isn’t going to question it. Gene usually only smiles like this when his mom calls, or when one of their friends have good news, or when he’s telling Babe about a life he saved in the ER that day, and it’s making something very warm bloom in Babe’s chest.

He closes his eyes against the feeling, hugs Eugene a little tighter and sighs happily when one of Gene’s hands come up to stroke soft fingers over the back of Babe’s head.

Yeah. Yeah, Babe really likes Friday afternoons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS:
> 
> \- jokes on u again still none for this shit i think
> 
> \- audrey says: "just warn people in advance that they are about melt into a puddle" so i will
> 
> * * *
> 
> ♩soft ♪ boys ♫ in ♬ love♩without ♪ realising ♫ it ♬ because♩they ♪ are ♫ oblivious ♬  
> 
> 
> I really should have gone with a food-y title for this whole fic, the way this shit is going (there's at least one more chapter with food coming up but it's in gene's pov and I'm trying to mix those up a bit, so enjoy the knowledge that this is essentially a filler chapter that I wrote up real quick in between cleaning the flat bc it's friday afternoon and I wanted to make my dad happy when he came home. however it turned into something I will bring with me to my funeral bc i love it. inspiration works in wild fucking ways sometimes)


	3. III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning starts off in a flurry of sheets, violence and confusion.
> 
> Eugene is woken up by an elbow to the face and the sound of a struggle. The next thing he logs is that Babe is running out of the room, hitting his shoulder on the doorway on his way out.
> 
> Gene is left lying in bed, tangled in the duvet, with an aching jaw and a surge of adrenaline fighting away the confused and sleep-heavy fog in his head. The sun has barely started to rise outside, and that’s all he has time to really notice about the day before the sound of retching reaches him.
> 
> OR: Did someone call for a sickfic? No? Well, have one anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sickfic. shameless fluff. that's it that's the chapter.
> 
> for saur, laura and audrey, my three sickfic musketeers <3
> 
> content warnings in the end noteS!

The morning starts off in a flurry of sheets, violence and confusion.

Eugene is woken up by an elbow to the face and the sound of a struggle. The next thing he logs is that Babe is running out of the room, hitting his shoulder on the doorway on his way out.

Gene is left lying in bed, tangled in the duvet, with an aching jaw and a surge of adrenaline fighting away the confused and sleep-heavy fog in his head. The sun has barely started to rise outside, and that’s all he has time to really notice about the day before the sound of retching reaches him.

He’s still tired, but it doesn’t take him very long to put the puzzle pieces together, and within a few moments Eugene’s pulled himself out of bed. Half walking, half stumbling into the bathroom, he doesn’t bother knocking on the wide-open door before he kneels down behind Babe.

There isn’t really much he can do, so Gene just strokes a hand up and down Babe’s back as he heaves, making soothing sounds and running a mental tally of what medical supplies they have home. Gene is feeling fine, so food poisoning is unlikely and besides, when he presses a hand to the back of Babe’s neck it’s burning up under Eugene’s fingers. 

He stands up to fill one of their little plastic toothbrushing mugs with cold water, checking their medicine cabinet while he’s at it, mulling over whether he remembers storing any fluid replacements in his bedroom when Babe groans from the floor.

“Hey there,” Gene says, kneeling back down and nudging Babe to lean back from the toilet bowl a little. “Here, rinse.”

Babe does, and Gene does him the favour of flushing the toilet before letting Babe lean his burning-red face against his chest. His breathing is shaky, and Eugene takes the little cup and places it on the floor before pressing a kiss into the top of Babe’s head.

“Don’t,” Babe mutters, sounding queasy and uncomfortable. Eugene rubs his shoulder with one hand. “Is’ gross. And you’ll get sick too.”

“It’s really not,” Gene argues in what he knows is his Doctor Voice, and it makes Babe snort, which then in turn makes him groan. “And if I’m going to get it, I have it already. Don’t worry about me. You think you can stand up?” 

Babe takes a few deep breaths, apparently really checking the answer to that, but eventually leans back a little from Eugene. “I think so,” he says, trying and succeeding to carry more of his own weight. “Really wanna shower, ‘m all fucking— sticky and shit.”

“Sounds good. Think you can manage on your own? I’ll get you some clean clothes and call your work.” Babe groans again, apparently having forgotten about the fact that he was supposed to do shit today, which, understandable. “Hey, I’ll take care of it. You get clean, okay?”

He gets Babe standing up, receives a not-entirely-reassuring “I’m fine, Gene,” as Babe struggles to pull his own shirt off. Eugene helps him down to his underwear, at which point Babe manages to convince Eugene that really, he can take it from here. 

Eugene doesn’t kiss him on the mouth before he goes, because he does have some survival instincts, but he really wants to for some unknown reason. He forces himself to leave, shutting the door behind him, hearing the shower turn on as he goes to dig Babe’s phone out from where he always stuffs it under the edge of his mattress at night. 

Babe doesn’t have a screen lock, because he’s way too trusting, which Eugene gladly takes advantage of as he scrolls through his contacts and texts his boss that he won’t be coming in for a while. It’s a bit short of a notice, but what are they supposed to do? Illness isn’t anything Eugene has power over, despite what his friends like to think.

Because Babe’s manager is a bit of a dick, he gets a passive-aggressive reply, which annoys him. Nonetheless, Babe is relieved of his duties for at least three days, which is the important bit. Eugene digs out a fresh set of pyjama pants, the soft flannel ones Babe uses in the winter, and quickly decides on lending him one of his own sleep shirts because Babe only owns short-sleeved ones and that just won’t do.

Walking into his own room to get it and check up on his personal supply of medicinal items, Eugene half remembers to dial his own superior. It’s only five AM, but she replies within a few rings anyway, because she’s a doctor and they’re all insane.

What? Babe is right about some things, sometimes.

“Roe,” she says, sounding both wide awake and asleep at once. Eugene really can’t tell if he’s just woken her up or if she is just like that in the mornings, but decides he’ll have to push his eventual apology into the future. “What’s going on? You okay?”

“Yeah, don’t worry,” he says, digging through his bedside drawer. No fluid replacement. Shit. “My roommate has been throwing up all night, and I just wanted to check if I’m allowed to come into work today?” 

It’s not entirely true, but Eugene is willing to bend the story a bit if it gets him a day off. Really, it’s for the good of his patients, all of them. His supervisor groans, but does so with an air of resignation Gene recognises as positive for his personal hopes at the moment. “Lovely,” she grumbles under her breath. “Your roommate have a fever?”

“I haven’t gotten allowed to check properly, yet,” he says, which is another slight lie. “But he’s definitely warm. We ate together yesterday so I don’t think it’s food poisoning, or I’d have it too right now.”

“Goddamnit,” she sighs down the line, accompanied by a sound like she’s rubbing her own face. “Okay, Roe, you check his fucking temperature as soon as you can. Wrestle him to the ground if you have to, I don’t care, and then you let me know what he’s at, okay? I’ll get back to you, but I think my bosses would kill me if I let you into the ER at this point.”

“I understand,” Gene says, really trying not to sound relieved. He can hear the shower turn off and hurries to pull one of his own long-sleeved sleep shirts out of his closet and goes back out to the bathroom. “What is it, twenty four hour incubation time before I can come back?”

“Forty eight and you know it.” Well. One does not lie to doctors. “Notice how I’m not questioning you here, Eugene. Use the time off. You and the norovirus have fun over there, I’ll see you in a few days.”

“Yeah, I’ll talk to you—“ she hangs up on him before he can finish the sentence, which Gene honestly is just happy about. He doesn’t do well with small talk when he has things to get done. It’s why he became a doctor.

Babe is sitting on the toilet when Eugene gets back, wrapped in a towel looking like death warmed over. Gene helps him into the clothes, and then all but pulls the man back to bed, to many protests.

“Jesus, Eugene,” Babe groans as he’s led back by an arm around his waist, “I can walk on my own.”

“Oh no, he’s busting out the full name,” Gene mutters under his breath, pushing on Babe’s shoulder to get him lying down on the mattress. “I’m in trouble now.”

Babe mutters something that sounds like it contains the word “asshole,” but also immediately burrows himself in the still-warm bedsheets, shivering hands pulling a pillow to his chest. Gene strokes a hand over Babe’s warm cheek, but when he starts moving back from the bed he’s held back by strong fingers wrapped around his wrist.

“Where are you going?” Babe mumbles, and the way he’s clearly halfway asleep already shouldn’t be as endearing as it is. “Don’t leave me.”

He sounds both annoyed and worried as he frowns at Eugene. God, how is it possible for someone to be so pouty, demanding, and adorable at the same time? 

That is a rhetoric question. Eugene finds all the above to be adorable, at least when it’s coming from Babe Heffron. He gently pries Babe’s fingers away and pulls the duvet up, tucking it snugly around him. 

“I’m just going to get some stuff,” Gene tells him, smiling at the way Babe snuffles unhappily. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Promise?” Babe looks like he genuinely doesn’t believe him, which says a lot about his judge of character. Eugene leans down to press a kiss to his cheek, squeezing their joined hands.

“I promise, Babe.”

Eugene tries to stay true to his word, he really does, but he also realises they don’t exactly have everything he’d like to have to care for a sick Babe. It’s barely past dawn, no reasonable store would be open right now, but Gene writes down what he’ll need to get eventually and packs up a for-now kit to bring back to bed.

Or, well, he says ‘kit’ because he’s work damaged, but in reality it’s just a thermometer, some ice cubes in a glass, chocolate, ibuprofen, a couple of oranges Eugene would normally take with him for lunch, a cold press from the freezer, a bottle of water and a multivitamin he can’t remember buying but will make use of anyway.

It’s really not sufficient, but it’ll have to do. Gene loads it up on a tray and gets back to Babe’s bedroom as quickly as he can, pausing at the bathroom to pick up the bucket they use when they mop the floors, just in case. 

Eugene places his tray of stuff down on the little table on Babe’s side of the bed before sitting down on the mattress, laying a careful hand on Babe’s shoulder. It doesn’t seem to help to be gentle, though, because Babe jumps like Gene has burned him, looking over his shoulder frantically.

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s just me,” Eugene soothes carefully, watching confusion turn to general misery as Babe gets his bearings. He lays his head back down with a groan, shivering into the blankets. Eugene pats his shoulder in pity, getting the thermometer ready. “Sorry it took so long. Here, open up.”

Babe mutters something Gene can’t quite make out, but obediently holds the thermometer in his mouth until it beeps, frowning with closed eyes. He looks impossibly soft, puffy hair sticking up with a mixture of water, sweat and getting ruffled around, cheeks red and pouting around the thermometer.

Eugene finds himself smiling, which is inappropriate, and forces it down by biting his bottom lip as he checks the temperature reading. It’s at 39.5, which isn’t exactly great, but not quite high enough that Gene needs to worry about Babe’s life at the moment.

It does make him feel more sympathy for the way Babe shivers under the duvet, though, seemingly unable to decide whether he wants to pull the covers over himself or kick them off. 

Gene decides to make the decision for him. Tugging a clean t-shirt from the little laundry pile sitting on the floor — Eugene is done with the argument of why Babe is so vehemently opposed to just putting his clothes away properly, he tells himself, so he determinedly does not comment on the fact that Babe Heffron, Certified Adult, can apparently manage the process of sorting his clothes out, washing them, drying them, folding them and carrying them into his room, but doesn’t have the energy to just put them int— _anyway_.

Tugging a clean t-shirt from the little laundry pile sitting on the floor, Eugene wraps the shirt around the frozen gel pack he’d brought with him. It’s just to distribute the cool a little more evenly before he lays it over Babe’s forehead gently. Babe moans into it, but also immediately pulls his shoulders up like he’s freezing, so Eugene tucks the duvet up tighter around him. 

But apparently that’s not good enough, because Gene finds one of his wrists getting stuck in a weak but determined grip, Babe looking up at him as he struggles trying to pull Eugene down onto him.

“Come here,” he says, in a petulant voice, tugging on Eugene’s arm best he can lying down. “‘m cold, help.”

“Is it too cold?” Eugene frowns immediately, fussing with the gel pack from where he’s now lying kind of half-leaned over Babe’s blanket-swathed body. “Here, let me—“

Babe cuts him off with a groan, flopping over on his back so that he can use both hands to try and tug Gene down on top of him. “No, Gene,” he says, sounding extremely done with him. “Just— fucking— come here, will you.”

Eugene finally gets it. He pushes Babe’s hands away gently before crawling in under the covers next to him, letting the other man drape himself over Gene’s chest best he can. Babe struggles around a lot for the next minute or so, desperately trying to find a comfortable position, eventually giving up with a frustrating moan and just kind of sags into Eugene.

He pats Babe’s head in sympathy where he’s nestled it into Gene’s chest, a curled up little ball of heat against Eugene’s body. His weight on Gene’s chest makes itself known every time Eugene breathes in, but it’s not unwelcome.

“I hurt,” Babe says, and Eugene waits for him to specify. He doesn’t, though, so Gene just kisses the crown of his head, presses the almost-forgotten cold pack to Babe’s neck and cards his fingers through his damp hair in attempts at soothing him a little bit. 

“Where does it hurt, sweetheart?” Eugene asks, looking over at his little pile of supplies on the bedside table. “You want some ibuprofen?”

“Everywhere,” is the miserable response he gets, along with a soft headshake. “Don’t want. Just— Stay.” 

“I’m not going anywhere, Edward,” Gene promises, moving slowly but still making Babe groan when he reaches for the little pack of pain meds he’d brought over. “Come on, you’ll feel better.”

“Eugene,” Babe whines, looking like he’s going to cry at the prospect of having to obey reason. “I don’t— don’t want medicine. Want snuggles.“

Babe is sick. Babe is sick and feverish and feeling bad and Eugene is not going to roll his eyes at this actual child in his arms, no matter how obnoxious or non-cooperative he is being, he won’t and he isn’t. This is not an eye roll, this is a ‘looking up into the ceiling, searching for the will to live’ move.

Of course Babe doesn’t see it that way, because he sniffles and looks up at Eugene with round, shining eyes and a trembling bottom lip. His face is flushed from fever and he really does look pretty miserable.

“You’re being mean to me,” Babe says in a small voice, and _oh for the love of—_ “I’m sick and sad and I hurt everywhere and the only thing I want is a hug and you’re not letting me have one, Genie, and that’s okay, but can you at least just let me curl up here and be sad in peace and not make me do things?”

_Sure_ , Eugene wants to say, _let me just go punch myself in the face a couple of times first_.

This is blatant emotional manipulation. Babe knows it, Eugene knows Babe knows this, and Babe probably knows that Eugene knows that he knows.

Eugene already has no defences for when Babe asks him for things, which this boy must also know at this point, so resorting to melodramatics is just straight-up unnecessary. For a few seconds they just stare at each other, Babe looking like he might actually make himself cry soon and Gene feeling like a dick despite seeing the theatrics for what they are.

“You’re really laying it on a bit heavy,” he responds, but only gets a couple of blinks in return. When Babe makes a sad (and probably fake) little cough, without breaking their eye contact, Eugene feels himself give in. “Fine, you win, no medicine. Come here, you— I don’t even know what to call you right now.”

“My name is Babe,” Babe says, sounding extraordinarily pleased with himself as he burrows back in under the covers. But now that he doesn’t have anything to distract him from it, Babe seems to remember how awful he’s feeling, because he groans again. “Don’t even think I could keep the pills down.”

Eugene kisses Babe’s hair with a sigh, holds him a little closer, like Gene can make him feel better through sheer will. “There’s a bucket here, if you need to, just so you know. Try to sleep a bit, maybe, yeah?”

Babe’s only response is a shiver, and Eugene moves the gel pack over to the other side of his neck to a thankful moan. For a while they stay like that, one of Gene’s hands going numb where it’s holding the ice pack, the other patting Babe’s head slowly. 

The warmth coming off the boy is nice, in a strange way, but as Eugene has been informed by aforementioned boy he is also a, quote, “ _crazy Southern desert swamp person who would not survive one day on an ice floe,_ ” end quote, so maybe he’s biased. Gene knows better than to say it, but he’s enjoying the excuse to cuddle up into some proper heat for once.

Babe, bless his soul, isn’t exactly hard to get physical contact out of, but he also has the temperature tolerance of an actual snow man. It’s nonsensical. He can run out into the snow barefoot — Eugene knows this from too many experiences of chasing the idiot down the street to wrestle shoes onto him — but gets cranky if Gene puts the thermostat up as much as half a degree.

This means that for all the time they’ve spent curled up together — which…Which is really getting up to be quite some amount of time, isn’t it? Huh — very little of it has actually been at Eugene’s preferred temperature of about a hundred degrees. Perhaps he ought to feel bad for finding comfort in the fact that Babe is literally feverish where he’s pressed against Gene’s chest, but he chooses to look at it as finding the good in a bad situation instead.

Because if there’s one thing that Babe needs whenever he’s feeling under the weather, for whatever reason in the world, it’s hugging. Eugene has learned this from many years of living with the man, not that it really took all that long to figure out, and he’s specifically spent the last few months perfecting his Babe-soothing techniques.

He knows exactly where Babe likes to keep his head (just above Eugene’s heart, high enough that Gene can kiss his hair but low enough to be able to hear his heartbeat) and how he likes to be held (one of Eugene’s hands around his back, the other with its fingers entwined with Babe’s) and what his tells for being uncomfortable are (frowning, squirming, laying still for ten second intervals while slowly nudging himself into a different position).

He also knows just how Babe likes his neck being scratched, how much pressure Eugene should use when tracing his ribs to not make it tickle, and at what speed to drag his knuckles down the line of Babe’s spine. 

Basically, Eugene knows a lot of tricks to make Babe comfortable, and he’s pulling almost every single one of them out of the bag right now. He thinks he might be succeeding in the endeavour, because Babe’s breathing slowly starts to even out as he relaxes into Gene’s chest. Babe seems to be falling asleep, until he isn’t anymore, shooting up fast enough to almost smash their heads together with a hand pressed over his mouth.

Acting entirely on instinct, Eugene gets the bucket pulled up just in time for Babe to dryly retch into it, almost bending himself in half at the waist from the force of it. Gene presses his face into Babe’s back gently, just letting him know that he’s there, trying to give what little comfort he can as his stomach tries to turn itself inside out.

Babe doesn’t even seem to get anything up, not having actually eaten or drunk anything since he’d vomited up what was left in him from last night, but he’s still shivering all over once his nausea finally seems to settle.

Eugene is there immediately, letting Babe rest against him and stroking his sweat-damp back through the fabric of the thin shirt Gene has leant him. He gets Babe to swallow a small mouthful of water, just enough to rinse the feeling out, but he refuses to even try to get the pills down.

“Sorry, Gene,” Babe mumbles, leaning his forehead on his knees as Eugene rearranges the pillows into a more comfortable pile behind them. He really should get some of the bedclothes out of his own room, he thinks, if they’re going to spend the whole day in bed. “For, you know. Being all gross and shit.”

“Edward, I’m literally a doctor,” Eugene deadpans, gently pulling Babe back down onto him and brushing his hair out of his face. “I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I couldn’t deal with a bit of vomiting. And a pretty shitty roommate. And even if those were both true, I’d still want to take care of you. So just let me know if there’s anything I can do, okay? Anything you want, just tell me.”

Babe takes a long breath, nuzzling himself back into Gene’s chest, pulling the covers up until there isn’t much more than a mop of red hair and a pink nose showing over the edge of it. He mumbles something Eugene can’t quite catch, and he kisses Babe on the head like it’s a question.

“What was that, sweetie?” 

“Gene, can—“ Babe pauses for just long enough for it to be noticeable, pressing his face into the space above Eugene’s heart. “Could you sing? For me? Please?”

Eugene swallows, because Babe asks like he’s ashamed of it, and Gene doesn’t know what to make of that. Deciding now to not be the time to try and unpack whatever this may or may not be about, Gene closes his eyes and nuzzles his cheek into Babe’s hair.

Gene doesn’t like the idea of being That Guy Who Sings, because it’s a trope of a personality trait that has never appealed to him. He doesn’t sing in front of other people. But, he’d asked for Babe to tell him if there was anything he wanted, and he did, so Gene obliges.

He goes for Frank Sinatra, trying to keep his voice level as he sings his way through _Fly Me To The Moon_ and _I’ve Got You Under My Skin_ , one by one going through what songs he has stashed in his personal repertoire of favourites. Eugene’s cheeks feel like they’re going to burn up, but Babe slowly gets calmed back down.

Gene’s voice stays low, because with Babe’s ear against his chest he could probably hear Eugene even if he was whispering, and it’s surprisingly undramatic. It feels nice. 

Babe is still and quiet, making Eugene feel warm and comfortable as he sings the songs that his _maman_ used to put on when he was sick as a child. It helped him then, and it seems to help Babe now, so maybe it’s just a nice thing and Gene shouldn’t overthink it too much.

Babe slowly relaxes, still shivering even as he falls asleep on Eugene’s chest, but his grip on Gene’s shirt loosens and he lets go of the tension he’s been keeping in his shoulders. 

There’s still a crease between his eyebrows, though, and Eugene reaches out to gently rubs his thumb over the little wrinkle. After a few seconds of coaxing, Babe’s forehead slowly smooths out, and Eugene doesn’t dare to move even just enough to kiss his damp hair.

Babe’s skin is hot against Eugene, and he’s breathing a little too fast and shallow, his entire body struggling to fight off whatever it is that’s gotten through his immune system, but he stays asleep. _My little fighter,_ Gene thinks fondly, and then spends the next five minutes frowning deeply into his own soul because what the fuck was that?

In the middle of his own self-scolding, he realises he never texted his supervisor back — no dice now, his phone is out of reach on the bedside table. She’ll have to take his earlier word for it because Eugene isn’t moving for any potential scolding in the world, not until Babe wakes back up first.

So instead, Eugene leans his cheek against the top of Babe’s head, closes his eyes and hums to himself to make the time go faster. He doesn’t worry about it.

He loses track of the time. At some point he must doze off, only waking up when Babe stirs, rearranging himself to press his face into Eugene’s neck with a deep, hot sigh. Even then, Gene only really moves enough to get a new hold on the boy and kissing his forehead until Babe snoozes off again, falling back asleep with this soft little furnace of a man pressed to his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: 
> 
> \- Vomiting, twice. 
> 
> \- The whole fic is Gene cuddling a sick Babe. Not very germ-conscious but very sweet.
> 
> \- At one point Babe pulls some real over-the-top emotional manipulation shit to get cuddles instead of having to take medicine. They both know that's what's going on, and it's done and received lovingly, but emotional manipulation is still emotional manipulation.
> 
> * * *
> 
> [ come say hi on tumblr! ](https://mariamegale.tumblr.com/)
> 
> i love me them these here snuggle boys


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Gene,” Babe laments, “Bill cancelled on me. And now I have no plans, and I was really looking forward to doing something, because this is my only night off this whole week and now I’m sad.”
> 
> Even for Babe, this is laying it on a bit thick. Eugene really tries to push his smile down just in case the man on his shoulder is being serious, but it’s hard. “Well, that’s not good,” he says, pressing his cheek into Babe’s mop of hair.
> 
> “No, it’s not,” Babe agrees, wrapping both his arms around one of Gene’s, clinging to it like a very large child. “And now I’ll have to stay in all night, and it’s going to be terrible, Eugene.”
> 
> “Edward.” His roommate just takes a deep, sad breath and Eugene gives in with a small, but not unfond, sigh. “Would you like for us to do something instead?”
> 
> OR: Something that is _Definitely Not A Date._

Babe wants something.

Eugene knows he wants something, because Babe has been sneaking glances at him from the corner of his eyes for the past ten minutes. They’re on opposite ends of the sofa, Eugene reading a book and Babe seemingly just hanging out with his own thoughts. 

He was watching something on his laptop, but at some point it was put away, leaving Babe to just stare out into nothing and chew his own lip. Gene doesn’t understand why he does that, sometimes, if it’s a decompressing thing or what is going on, but who is he to tell someone they can’t enjoy their own daydreams? 

No one. He is no one to do that. Especially not when Babe gets this look on his face, like someone just said something funny. When he lifts the corners of his mouth like he’s not even aware of it, not really blushing but definitely going a little pink at the cheekbones. Eugene wonders what he’s thinking about, if it’s a memory or something made up, if he’s thinking of G—

_Anyway,_ Babe keeps shooting him glances. That is all that is happening here. Eugene is reading, not thought-rambling, and Babe wants something because he keeps shooting him glances.

He decides to cut off whatever inner monologue he is definitely not having right now by asking, “you okay over there, Heffron?”

“What? Oh, yeah, uh. Yeah, I’m good,” Babe replies, then goes quiet again. Eugene turns a page he hasn’t read, just to seem busy. He can practically hear Babe frown, and then the couch cushions dip under his weight as he shuffles over to sit next to Gene.

Eugene puts his book down and looks over at his roommate, who’s donned a facial expression that speaks of nothing but trouble. It’s all soft and open, yet very determined, and Gene immediately resigns himself to whatever it is they’ll end up doing today.

“Gene, I’m bored,” is how Babe chooses to phrase it, and while that’s not an uncommon reason for him to be clawing for attention, right now it is slightly odd.

“Aren’t you supposed to meet Bill soon?” Gene says with a frown, because he’s pretty sure the two of them had plans to go see a movie or something. Babe sighs, needlessly deep, shaking his head before leaning it on Eugene’s shoulder.

“No,” he laments, “he cancelled on me. And now I have no plans, and I was really looking forward to doing something, because this is my only night off this whole week and now I’m sad.”

Even for Babe, this is laying it on a bit thick. Eugene really tries to push his smile down just in case the man on his shoulder is being serious, but it’s hard. “Well, that’s not good,” he says, pressing his cheek into Babe’s mop of hair.

“No, it’s not,” Babe agrees, wrapping both his arms around one of Gene’s, clinging to it like a very large child. “And now I’ll have to stay in all night, and it’s going to be terrible, Eugene.”

“Edward.” His roommate just takes a deep, sad breath and Eugene gives in with a small, but not unfond, sigh. “Would you like for us to do something instead?”

Babe breathes in like he’s preparing to blow out the candles on his birthday cake, twisting his head to prop his chin on Gene’s shoulder. “Gene—! I mean. If you want to. That could be nice.”

Eugene looks over at him and his stupidly happy face, and he can’t stop from laughing.

“You know you can just ask,” he says, watching Babe’s face turn from innocent to playful, leaning forward to press a kiss to Eugene’s cheek.

“It’s more fun this way,” he says, before giving Gene’s arm a squeeze and getting up from the sofa with a skip. “Right, I’ll get ready and then we can go!”

“Babe, what—“ He doesn’t have any time to protest, or more probably isn’t given any, before Babe all but runs into his room. “We haven’t even decided what to— oh why do I bother,” he mutters, tossing his book on the table when Babe only whines out a “ _Eugene!_ ” from his bedroom.

Eugene tries to be annoyed. He really, really does, but he’d lie if he said he succeeds. Babe has plans, whether he wants to tell Eugene about them or not, and that means that resistance is futile. All Gene can do is make sure the water bottle he keeps in his backpack is filled up, because if he’s going to be dragged around Philadelphia in the (admittedly very nice) afternoon sunshine he’s at least not going to do it dehydrated. 

Ten minutes later they’re out the door, Babe having dialled down his energy just enough that Eugene feels like he’s still being dragged, but not too hard for him to be able to laugh at it. When they get out of the building and start walking down the street, throwing ideas between them on what exactly do do, Gene feels himself all but turn his entire soul up toward the sun.

Maybe it’s been a bit too long since he went outside just for the sake of enjoying being outside. It’s been years since he moved from Louisiana, but the Philly winters still take their toll on his mind and his Vitamin D levels, and he hadn’t realised just how much he’s missed proper sunlight until he was in it.

From the smile Babe shoots him when he mentions it, Eugene gets the feeling that he might have been the only one who hadn’t noticed. He suddenly struggles with the urge to squeeze Babe’s hand, settling for hugging the man close with one arm around his shoulders instead.

———

They end up just walking around, for a while. Gene knows the city, but not like Babe knows it, and it slowly turns into a pseudo-sightseeing tour with guide Heffron, pointing out important places both from Philadelphia history and Babe’s own past.

He never thought he’d be so interested in hearing about places Babe got hurt falling over as a child, but the image of this lanky little boy running around on his summer break, peppered with freckles and out of breath from playing cops and robbers, lodges itself impossibly fondly in his head. 

“God, half the neighbourhood got involved at one point, we almost started a gang war full of eleven-year-olds,” he says with a snort. “When school started they were so worried about all the animosity that we were called into five assemblies in a row to hear stories about how Jesus wouldn’t be in a gang. Bill told me later he even heard about it at his school. ”

Eugene does take his hand, then, and Babe’s head shoots up in surprise. It melts into a smile fast enough, making Gene’s heart beat a little faster. He squeezes Gene’s fingers back, cheeks pink as they smile at each other for a few seconds before Babe drops the contact with a shake of his head.

“Sorry, I kinda ran away with all of that.”

“Don’t apologise,” Eugene says, picking their walk back up. The sun is just beginning to settle behind the skyscrapers, making it feel warmer than it should for September in the north by painting everything in a soft, orange glow. “If I didn’t want to listen, I could have asked you to stop.”

“Oh, yeah,” Babe says, “still, sorry. If we ever go to Louisiana, I promise to listen to you all you want.

Eugene huffs out a laugh, can’t stop himself from smiling. His grandmother did that, once, when he was a kid. Took him out to old Bayou Chene, what was left of it, and told him about what it was like when she was a child. Showed him where his grandparents and great-grandparents were born, and told him how the town had looked before five floods too many forced everyone to leave. 

Now he tells Babe all about it, for no reason, feeling suddenly shy of his own memories of New Iberia. They’d left, too, after Hurricane Ike, and he’d held his grandmother’s hand the whole car ride out of what was left of the town.

Eugene doesn’t talk about that part, but he wonders what it’s like to have lived your entire life within the same couple of hundred square miles, for generations. Walking the same streets as your parents, and their parents, and their parents. Gene isn’t sure if he’d like it, but at the same time he can’t help but strangely miss something he’s never experienced. 

Some of it must bleed into his voice, because Babe’s eyes and smile are soft when Eugene meets his gaze, and he suddenly feels strangely vulnerable. He looks away, clears his throat, wraps up his rambling and then continues their walk in silence.

“Hey,” Babe says, smoothly moving the moment on, “we’ve been out for a while, do you wanna grab some dinner?”

Gene agrees, gladly, and they for some god-only-knows reason end up in a Ramen restaurant (Eugene isn’t even going to delve into the fact that he didn’t really know Ramen was even a proper thing, and not exclusively instant noodles, because Babe would never let him hear the end of it) and it’s a mixture of embarrassment, hilarity and resignation that they will never speak of it again once it becomes clear that neither of them have any idea how to use chopsticks.

The soup is good, though, and they leave two hours later full, blushing and giggling.

Babe, because he’s good with people like that, had ended up going into a weird back-and-forth with the wait staff that went from suspicious to wholeheartedly trying to help them once Babe managed to convince them that no, they weren’t making fun of their culture on purpose, they really just were that inexperienced.

Eugene was roped into it, and if you asked him he would not be able to mention one other time in his whole life when he was fine with making a fool of himself in public. 

(Well, he thinks that at first, but then he’s reminded of when he carted Babe around a supermarket for an hour and a half the other week. Or this summer, when they were at the park and Babe made him take two shots of tequila and asked the hostess of a children’s birthday party if Eugene could get his face painted like a cat. Or the time they went to the aquarium and he’d ended up carrying Babe around piggyback-style because he wouldn’t stop pressing his face up against the glass. Or—)

_Anyway_. Somehow Eugene doesn’t feel embarrassed, and they leave the restaurant promising to come back after practicing with the actual, proper chopsticks they were given by the man behind the counter when they paid for their food. 

On their walk home, Gene only gets a “ _Oh god, Edward—_ “ out before Babe stops him point blank in the street, capturing Eugene’s head between his hands. 

“No, don’t you dare,” Babe tells him, clearly trying to keep his smile down and shaking Gene’s head gently. “We had a fun time, and I don’t want you to let the shame take over, because it was lovely, Gene. I know you hold your Southern Pride really high—“

“I don’t think that means what you—“

“Shh, Eugene, I’m trying to make a point here. I know you have this idea that you’re very much above looking like an idiot, and that’s it’s whole own thing that I promise not to go into but please, tonight was fun. We had fun, and I enjoyed myself, and I want to remember it fondly, so don’t go spiralling off on what we looked like because it was nice. Okay?”

Eugene laughs, but promises, and Babe squeezed his face once before taking a skipping step down the street.

“Good. Now come on, I did not think it’d get this cold when I put shorts on this morning.”

He doesn’t even try to delve into what the warm feeling in his chest is, because just watching Babe not-quite-running like he’s way colder than is reasonable, even to Eugene, is a nice enough moment to not be spoiled by his own brooding head.

———

“Jesus Christ,” he hisses, back-pedalling on his earlier thought when they finally get inside their flat. “How do people live here? It’s barely even September, how am I supposed to survive winter?”

Babe rolls his eyes, just pulling his shoes and jacket off without laying a quip about Gene and his fragile, southern skin. “You’ve lived here for six years, Gene,” is all he says, but Eugene continues to frown, not about be swayed by logic this time. “And I’ll let the Philly weather gods know that you’re unhappy the next time I talk to them.”

When Eugene continues to whine, finally getting his boots off and marching to his room, he can hear Babe sigh behind him. Gene doesn’t even bother taking his jeans off before crawling into his bed, having looked forward to it for the past twenty minutes.

Eugene’s bed is… A bit of an ongoing project. It had started by him not really being sure how to spend money in reasonable ways, afraid to buy stuff for the apartment because he and Babe really didn’t know each other all that well when they first moved in together, but having no idea what else would be a responsible money-spending cause. So he’d ended up just buying pillows until he couldn’t reasonably fit any more on his mattress.

Then that looked stupid, the mountain of pillows on top of one duvet, so he got more duvets, and then a number of fluffy, soft blankets when the winter months came, and then a number of more heavy, functional blankets when those became distracting, and it kind of snowballed from there.

His bed is more of a living, organic mess of bedclothes than a bed, at this point, but Gene loves it. Especially when he misses home, or is sad, or freezing and angry at the northern hemisphere for daring to be so goddamn cold all the time. 

Gene is interrupted in his angry self-cuddling when he hears the door to his room open, and a few seconds later the layers of blankets he’s under are slowly sorted through until Babe’s smiling face finally finds him. His roommate scoots in beside him without saying a word, and Eugene can’t find it in himself to complain. 

“Couldn’t let you freeze in here all on your own,” Babe mumbles. Gene takes the invitation to shuffle over, cuddle closer to Babe in the hopes of sharing, or stealing, some of his body heat. “Especially since it’s my personal fault Philly is so cold in the fall.”

If Eugene didn’t know better, he’d say Babe sounds nervous, so he presses a kiss to Babe’s neck in what he hopes is reassurance before snuggling his face into his shoulder. 

“This is a good apology,” Gene replies, himself suddenly feeling strangely shy. Babe’s arms wrap around him, holding him closer, and Eugene lets himself relax into it. “Thank you, Babe. For tonight.”

“Don’t worry about it. It was nice.”

“Yeah,” Gene says, feeling Babe’s heartbeat match his own quick pulse as they slowly build up a good amount of warmth between them. A kiss is pressed into the crown of his head and he takes a deep breath, feeling Babe’s soft, comforting smell warm him up just as much as the blankets. “Yeah, it was nice.”

They’re just two boys in a bed together, holding on with warm cheeks and racing hearts, acting like everything is perfectly normal.

It’s nice. Gene wouldn’t want to swap it for anything in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Pride Month, guys. I love you all dearly and wish you well, wherever in the world you may be. There is so much love on this planet, I promise, no matter what it seems like in certain moments. 
> 
> You all mean a lot to me and I will hold my little thumbs and wish for you all to do well <3


	5. V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Judging from the way Eugene looks like he’s just de-aged about four years in the span of their fifteen-minute walk, Babe isn’t the only one enjoying the sunshine.
> 
> But he doesn’t know how to express that without sounding like he’s obsessed with making Gene happy and also knowing what he looks like when he isn’t (like the wrinkle in Eugene’s brows and the curve of his shoulders, whether his fingers curl around his coffee mug gently or grip the handle tight, or just lifts it up like he’s a fucking claw machine, are all at the forefront of Babe’s mind at all times, as if he has a goddamned archive of different ways in which Eugene Roe shows stress and discomfort) so Babe just bumps their shoulders together and talks about stupid animals and their stupid wriggly bodies.
> 
> OR: realisations, part one.

“I wanna go to the park.”

Eugene looks up from his phone to where Babe is leaning over their kitchen table. Babe returns his gaze, hoping his face is more innocent than mischievous. Gene’s eyes narrow nonetheless, and he gives Babe a once-over as he appears to try to figure out the catch.

Of course, there’s no catch. Unless you count ‘getting Eugene Roe to leave the apartment for a reason not related to work, food or the occasional more-or-less mandatory social outing with their friends’ to be a catch, which Babe does not.

The summer has gone by too quickly, and it took Babe a while into September to realise the error in his ways. He’d been too caught up with the joys of keeping Eugene in bed as much as possible to take advantage of the good weather and bright nights, and now he’s desperately looking to make amends.

Winter will be here soon. Eugene does not fare well with the winters. The man has a prescription for Vitamin D, for Christ’s sake, he needs all the sunlight he can possible get.

So what do? Well, what Babe has done is to make vigorous research into the weather and pinpointed this particular Saturday as a day perfect for a day-long outing. It’s going to be warm and sunny, with no winds to speak of, just a perfect day in which to take advantage of the weather. Now remains only the small detail of actually, like, getting Eugene to agree to it.

Which means he’s trying to look innocent as Gene tries to gage whether this is a trick or not. It doesn’t seem to be working, because he looks like he’d trust Babe with just about nothing at the moment.

He sighs, feeling very tired with constantly having to struggle with this man when it comes to the important things. “Come on, Gene,” he groans, slumping down on his elbows, “it’s going to be really nice weather and I just want to enjoy it before fall comes to fuck us up the ass again.”

“I thought you liked fall, Edward,” Eugene retorts, although he is putting his phone down. That does bode well for Babe. “Why the park, though? We have a balcony—“

“Oh my God, can you stop being so pragmatic all the time?” Eugene looks oddly proud, which probably means Babe used the word ‘pragmatic’ correctly which, _good job Babe, you’re doing well. Anyone who doubted your “word of the day” toilet paper can go fuck themselves, because Gene just smiled at you thanks to it._ “I don’t want to sit on the balcony, I want to get a lunch pack and a blanket and go to the park and do nothing, and just waste this day in the sunlight.”

Now it’s Gene’s turn to sigh, rubbing the side of his nose with closed eyes. “Edward, does the fact that there’s no wifi in the park have anything to do with it?”

Well, that gets Babe to bite his lip, feeling called out. 

Okay, look, he has no problem with Eugene taking his work home with him. The man saves lives for a living, and even though Babe doesn’t exactly understand what Gene could even have to work with from home, he isn’t about to stop him. If it’s important, it’s important.

But lately, there has been a lot of it. Of Eugene working instead of doing other things, like cooking or reading or cleaning or watching shitty reality tv with Babe, or playing games with Babe, or listening to Babe ramble about anything and nothing, or just generally hanging out with Babe.

Not to mention… Other activities, but that’s actually not bothering him too much. Out of all the things Babe has missed about Eugene for the last two weeks, sex is actually pretty far down on the list.

He misses the company. He misses Eugene, he misses their back-and-forth banter and their check-ins over dinner and cuddling on the sofa and sharing lazy kisses and tight hugs. Babe misses Eugene, and he’s also seen the way that the lack of rest is taking a toll on his roommate.

Eugene has been looking tense and tired these last few days. Not sullen, exactly, but the bags under his eyes have deepened and he seems to sleep badly, if not too little. He still does what he sets out to do with the same precision as always, but there’s something automatic about it that worries Babe to bits. 

So, a day in the park is his planned remedy, if only he can get the asshole to stop being so stubborn and just agree to something nice, for once.

“Maybe,” Babe concedes, and continues with annoyance as Eugene takes a deep breath in response. “Eugene, I refuse to let you tell me I’m being unreasonable. I don’t have a problem with you working, you have to know that, and I would never tell you—“

“I know, Babe, I don’t think you’re— That that’s what you’re doing,” Gene says gently and finally meets Babe’s gaze with tired eyes. “I’m sorry, I know it’s been… A lot, lately. I didn’t mean for it to go out over you. I’m not saying that because you’ve made me feel guilty,” he says quickly, cutting Babe off before he can even get the words out. “That’s not your point and I know it, Edward. I just wanna let you know I’m sorry. I have been paying you too little attention.”

“That’s not…” Babe isn’t sure what to say, suddenly feeling his ears go warm. “Gene, you have no obligation to pay any attention to me, I didn’t mean, I just… You’ve been working a lot. You need to take breaks, is all.”

Eugene’s eyes narrow again and Babe wishes he’d never brought it up. He hates this, hates feeling needy, hates appearing like a whiny child angry that he hasn’t been looked at for all of five minutes. He didn’t—

He’s not lying when he says he’s missed Eugene’s company, of course not, but he also knows he’s not entitled to it. Babe’s not a child. He’s had that pointed out to him, a lot and often, throughout his life. And this is childish behaviour. For God’s sake, Gene is just doing his job, he’s got the fucking right to.

Whatever Babe feels about that is irrelevant — he’s not Eugene’s wife, or his mother, he has no say over what Gene does or does not do with his time. 

But because Babe is a child, he doesn’t say that. Instead, he stands up and puts his cereal bowl in the sink, curses his own red cheeks as he tells Eugene “sorry, I realise— I’m sorry for being childish, forget it, I’m sorry,” and tries to walk out of the kitchen before his dignity reaches negative numbers.

But because Eugene is an adult, he doesn’t let that happen. Instead, Babe’s wrist is caught in a gentle grip, keeping him in place as Gene gets up from his own seat to crowd Babe’s space gently.

“Hey, no,” Gene says, bringing his free hand up to Babe’s warm cheek. “What’s this? You’re not childish, Babe, not at all. I mean it when I say I’ve been too busy, and it’s just kind of you to think about me, yeah? Yeah? You’re not being childish at all.”

Eugene’s thumb is slowly stroking over Babe’s cheekbone, and he’s nodding gently, and Babe nods with him. “Yeah,” he echoes in a small voice, and he fucking hates how small it is. “Yeah, okay, if you say so, Gene. I trust you.”

The smile he gets in return does things to Babe’s stomach, but he refuses to let his head spiral into thoughts about how needy for validation he is, because Eugene said it was okay. Gene said it, and Gene doesn’t lie, so Babe has no right to question him. 

Is that unhealthy? Babe doesn’t think so, but if it is, it’s far from his most unhealthy habit anyway.

“That’s good, Babe, I’m glad you trust me. It’s very brave of you. Thank you.” Eugene kisses his nose, which shouldn’t be as endearing as it is, and then smiles at Babe. “Now come on, you pack up a blanket and things and I’ll make us some sandwiches, yeah? We should leave before the good spots get taken.”

Babe nods, presses their cheeks together for a few seconds, just enjoying the comfort for a little bit longer. Eugene indulges him, because Eugene is a kind man, until Babe feels ready to smile and squeeze his hand back and skip out of the kitchen, deciding to just be happy about the upcoming day instead.

He compliments himself for making good plans, first in his own head and then out loud, just to hear Gene laugh, which in turn makes Babe beam proudly as he starts rummaging through Narnia (which is what they’ve named The Closet Where They Stuff Shit When They Don’t Know Where Else To Put It) in search for their proper picnic blankets.

Twenty minutes later they’re out the door, because Eugene is efficient and Babe is a speedy boy when he’s excited about something. 

And how can he not be excited? His plan worked, and not only does that mean getting Gene out of the house, but also having his undivided attention for at least a few hours. Babe finally has the time to go on that rant about platypuses that he’s been sitting on for four days, and Gene does nothing but smile and nod along like he’s just happy to be there.

Babe knows he’s listening, though, because Eugene would never do something as cruel as ignore him in a moment like this. 

So he happily goes on, talking about the fucked up logic of putting beaks and beaver tails on those swimmy bastards, swinging their packed bag between them as they make their way to the park. It’s just past 10am, the sun bright but the streets still calm, and Babe can already feel the warmth in the air.

Judging from the way Eugene looks like he’s just de-aged about four years in the span of their fifteen-minute walk, Babe isn’t the only one enjoying the moment. He really is quite proud of himself.

But he doesn’t know how to express that without sounding like he’s obsessed with making Gene happy and also knowing what he looks like when he isn’t (like the wrinkle in Eugene’s brows and the curve of his shoulders, whether his fingers curl around his coffee mug gently or grip the handle tight, or just lifts it up like he’s a fucking claw machine, are all at the forefront of Babe’s mind at all times, as if he has a goddamned archive of different ways in which Eugene Roe shows stress and discomfort) so Babe just bumps their shoulders together and talks about stupid animals and their stupid wriggly bodies.

“They look like they were supposed to be two-dimensional, but then God had a fucking big brain moment and decided to add a third dimension to the universe and forgot to scrap them between drafts,” he finishes up when they finally reach a secluded spot under a big tree. 

“Never look up what a walrus really looks like,” Eugene says absentmindedly, making Babe hold the bag open for him as he digs their blankets out (yes, blankets, plural, because Babe is a man who bruises easily and he will not sacrifice comfort for practicality, thank you) to go lay them out.

“Bold of you to think I would ever look up those hellish creatures,” Babe responds, helping Eugene sort their portable blanket nest out right. “I was fucked up by Pingu as a kid and I have remained fucked up ever since.”

“Oh, so it’s Pingu’s fault you’re like this, then?” Eugene quips, and Babe stares at the man in betrayed horror as Eugene sits down, leaning back against his tree like he didn’t just go Brutus on Babe’s ass. “I thought it was the result of some kind of accident.”

“Eugene,” he scoffs, but only gets a very innocent look in return. Babe makes an indignant noise, lying down to aggressively put his head in Gene’s lap. “I cannot believe you’d— how dare— Eu _gene!”_

Gene doesn’t seem sorry, although his right hand is gentle as he cards through Babe’s hair, digging around for a book with his left one. Babe glares at his roommate, because if Eugene thinks Edward Heffron is the kind to be placated with some scalp scratches and barely-cuddles in the sunshine, he is sorely mistaken.

“I may look like I’m a tough cookie, but underneath this very rough-and-tumble exterior, I do have feelings,” Babe says with a frown, earning him a soft grin as Eugene looks over to the side of the blanket for something.

“I’m sorry, Edward, I didn’t realise,” Gene tells him, leaning away for a moment to pluck a dandelion growing at the roots of the tree. “Here, take this as a token of my regret.”

“It’s a pretty shitty token of regret,” Babe says, but accepts the thing anyway. He always loved dandelions, even though they were supposed to be weeds. When he was a kid him and his sister used to rub them over each other’s cheeks until they were coloured bright yellow, and now the memory has him smiling. “But I’ll guess it’ll do.”

Eugene laughs, scooting around a little until he’s at a more comfortable position, one leg bent with his book propped up against it, Babe’s head still securely in his lap. Babe has brought his handheld games, but right now he’s honestly happy just enjoying the fresh air and the fingers gently carding through his hair.

“If you’re still sad when we get home,” Gene tells him, “we can have dinosaur chicken nuggets for dinner, tough boy.”

Babe doesn’t squeal, but he does laugh, because Eugene never has the energy to indulge the part of him that wants to live on frozen food until the day he dies. Apparently the sunshine really is doing him wonders.

He doesn’t know what he ever did to deserve a friend like Eugene.

Babe is… Look, he knows he’s childish. He knows, and most of the time, he’s fine with the consequences of it. The amounts of relationships, of friendships, that have ended before they even begun because of Babe’s antics are more numerous than he ever wants to think about.

He doesn’t blame them — he gets that it must be a lot, this borderline obsession Babe has with not taking shit seriously, but he also has a hard time wanting to change it. Babe keeps waiting for the moment to arrive when he’ll start wanting to grow up, no longer finding pirate bubble baths hilarious or Sunday morning cartoons wonderful, or finally learning how to watch foreign-language films.

But the moment has never come, and Babe also kinda isn’t overly keen on forcing it. Yeah, he’s an overgrown toddler, and as long as he remains as such he knows he’ll never find things like love or a stable career, but there’s also… 

There’s also something comforting about it. He spent most of his actual childhood and adolescence worried about things way, way too serious for his age — like being loved by his family and not getting beaten to a pulp or excommunicated, for example — and now it’s almost like he’s paying it back to himself, by being a caricature of a man who goes nuts over shit like light-up sneakers and soap bubbles.

It feels like vindication.

It’s also borderline insufferable. Babe’s not an idiot. He knows that as funny as he is as a hang-around friend, there’s also a reason that he’s single, and it mostly has to do with the fact that he’s a five-year-old shoved into a twenty-four-year-old’s body. 

_Okay, Edward, stop._ This day is too nice to go into the mental hurdle of the shit he’ll have to give up in order to find love, so he returns to his original point: Babe is happy to have Eugene in his life.

Eugene, who always indulges him, draws him baths and stocks them up on chocolate milk and makes sure there’s always a spare duvet in the sofa for Babe to wrap himself in when he’s feeling extra snuggly. 

Eugene, who lets Babe ramble about platypuses and baby Yoda and the merits of different coloured Slushees, never cutting Babe off and never letting his smile turn mocking or his laughter disdainful.

Eugene, who finely chops onions like he’s a master chef because he knows Babe doesn’t like the consistency, who lets him have dino nuggets and always makes sure his socks are oddly matched after laundry day.

Yeah… Yeah, Babe is lucky to have found a roommate like him. 

That’s…

He went on a weird tangent, there, huh.

It’s making something odd stir in his chest, and Babe doesn’t know what to make of it, so he clears his throat, asks Gene to hand him his game and focuses on stocking up fish for his island for the next hour, instead.

———

Later that night, Babe is watching Jurassic Park on his laptop while Eugene is in the kitchen heating nuggets up for them (it’s a dino kind of night, tonight). Babe wouldn’t comment on it, but it is taking an awful lot of time, which is… Odd. Really, getting some pre-made shit out of an oven should not be this long of a process.

But Gene had also been very adamant that Babe should stay put, so he is, while also kinda wondering if everything is okay in there.

When Eugene finally returns with two plates, plopping one down in Babe’s lap with a kiss on his head and a “ _thank you for today, my favourite tough boy,_ ” Babe almost asks before he sees his nuggets and the words get stuck in his throat.

Eugene has given every dinosaur on his plate a pair of sunglasses made out of ketchup, with a precision that is just… Far too much for such a silly… Just to make Babe… It’s just too much.

Especially when he looks over to see that Gene has turned his own docuseries back on, immediately re-engrossed in… Whatever it is about, not looking at Babe, like he made Babe’s dino nuggets into a cool squad just because he wanted to, not to get any appreciation for it.

Babe has never been more in love in his whole life, and it’s kind of making him want to cry, because what the fuck is he supposed to do with that?

Wait. He’s in love with Eugene. The realisation hits him like a ton of bricks.

He’s fallen head over fucking heels in love with his roommate, who is kind to him and indulges Babe’s stupid whims like he enjoys it, who regularly fucks his brains out and cuddles him for hours afterwards, who tells Babe he’s brave and kind and—

Babe is going to cry, for real, because what the fuck, he can’t—

He doesn’t know how to deal.

He doesn’t know how to deal with the knowledge that he’s in love with the most perfect man in the world. He also doesn’t know how the fuck it took him this long to realise how absolutely fucked he is over Eugene Roe. Mostly he doesn’t know what to do, now that he has realised.

So he does the only thing he can think of when he’s sad or scared or overwhelmed, putting his laptop away to scoot over to Eugene’s side and nuzzle into him.

“Hey, what—“ Gene mumbles, but also immediately puts an arm around Babe’s shoulder. “Weren’t you watching Jurassic Park?”

“I was,” Babe says in response, surprised by how level his voice is coming out despite his inner turmoil, “but it felt cruel to eat dinos while watching dinos, you know?”

“Oh, yeah,” is Gene’s only response, like that makes perfect sense, shuffling around to let Babe get more comfortable. “Let me know if you wanna watch something else, I can pick this up later.”

“No,” Babe says, picking up his plate of sunglasses-wearing dinosaur nuggets, not sure if it’s Gene’s or his own heartbeat he’s hearing from where he’s pressed his face into Eugene’s chest. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because Gene is warm and safe and firm and it’s all Babe cares about, “no, this is perfect.”

He gets a kiss on his head, and then they go quiet, Gene attention on his show while Babe nibbles at his nuggets and tries not to freak the fuck out. There’s a hand on his shoulder, gently stroking up and down the line of his arm, and he has food and blankets and a man he’s in love with.

Yeah.

Yeah, Babe’s good. Right here, just like this. Let the rest of the world and the future hold what it may.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :))))))))))
> 
> [ come say hi on tumblr ](https://mariamegale.tumblr.com/)
> 
> that's all i got to say for now, see you in two days for part 2


	6. VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My ma asked if I wanted to come over for dinner next Sunday. Apparently Bella’s gonna be there.”
> 
> “Bella’s gonna bring her boyfriend,” Babe says. Eugene is still trying to figure out why any of this is making Babe uncomfortable — he likes his sister’s boyfriend, as far as Gene knows, and sure, his family weren’t as tight as Eugene’s but it wasn’t like they never invited him over. “Apparently dad, uh. Was wondering... if my girlfriend wanted to come.”
> 
> OR: Realisations, part 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end notes <3 
> 
> thank you all for sticking with this jskskshksskj

They’re making dinner when Babe’s phone rings. 

He curses, hurries to rinse his hands off from where he’s been chopping tomatoes before pulling his mobile out of his pocket. Eugene sees him frown down on the screen for a split-second before he answers, pressing the phone between his ear and his shoulder while he wipes his hands on his trousers.

“Ma, hi, how are you?” Babe says, walking out of the kitchen. Gene goes to take over his station at the chopping board, hearing the door to Babe’s room close behind him. 

He sometimes wonders about Babe’s relationship with his parents. The man loves them, he knows that, but for people living in the same city they don’t actually see each other that often. Babe goes over to their place to celebrate holidays, but that’s about it. 

If Eugene was still living in Louisiana, let alone the same town as his mum and dad, he’d be over there a few times a month at least, eating jambalaya as his mother fussed over his weight. It’s been a long time since Gene accepted the fact he’ll go through life as a somewhat skinny man, but that fact won’t stop his ma from hoping he’ll one day manage to put on some proper weight.

God, she’d have a heart attack if she ever saw Babe. Eugene can’t help but smile at the thought of the food she’d force on him, fussing about how Gene needs to make sure he eats as she cooked enough to feed half a company. 

He should give her a call, invite her to Philadelphia. Maybe with their combined forces they could sort Babe’s eating habits out.

On that note he lifts the chopping board over to the stove, carefully scraping the pile of chopped tomatoes into the pot there. The bottom of the pan fizzles with the juices, and Eugene hurries to stir it, furrowing his brow as he hopes they didn’t burn the mince. 

Guarnere and Perconte have recently made a pact to not eat what their friends cook until they learn how to make proper Italian food, which means that Babe and Eugene — ever the people pleasers — have been eating a lot of pasta lately.

Eugene’s schedule has been all over the place for the past few months thanks to the insanity of residency, depriving them of some of their more cemented rituals. It’s bothered Gene, because there are few things he cannot live without, and his weekly thing of cooking for Babe (slowly morphing into cooking with Babe over the last year or so) has gradually moved to the top of that list.

But this particular Sunday they’re both off work, so they’ve decided to attempt to make an actual Bolognese, two hour simmer included. Babe had looked at Eugene like he was crazy when he’d read the recipe to him as they lay in bed that morning, but Gene had just raised his eyebrows and reminded him that gumbo took at least three hours, and he made that on the regular. 

Babe had shaken his head into Eugene’s chest, muttering something about how people who cooked were insane, which only made Gene roll his eyes.

“Good food takes time. Didn’t your parents ever teach you how to cook?” He said, knowing the answer, just to tease him. The happy shiver Babe made at having his neck scratched didn’t stop him from shooting back at Eugene.

“No, Gene, of course they didn’t.” He yawned and rubbed the side of his face into Eugene’s sternum. “You think they expected their good Catholic son to have to fend for himself out here? That’s what I got you for.”

Eugene was going to get his eyes stuck in the back of his head if he kept rolling them at this rate. He flicked the tip of Babe’s nose before tilting his head up with a finger under the chin, pulling him up into a kiss that had ended up derailing the conversation.

Now, he can hear Babe walk back into the kitchen, and Eugene smiles when he feels the other man come up behind him and wrap an arm around his stomach. Babe pushes his nose into Gene’s neck, humming contentedly when Eugene press their heads together.

“How was your mom?” Eugene asks, pouring a couple of shots of red wine into the pot. Babe’s quiet for a few seconds. “Edward?”

“She’s good,” comes the reply, Babe’s voice low but uncomfortably tense in an odd way Eugene doesn’t really know how to interpret. “She asked if I wanted to come over for dinner next Sunday. Apparently Bella’s gonna be there.” 

Eugene hums in response, reaching up with one hand to stroke Babe’s hair slowly. The arms around his waist tighten their hold, and Eugene closes his eyes, leaning against the press of Babe’s body to his back. 

“Bella’s gonna bring her boyfriend,” Babe says. Eugene is still trying to figure out why any of this is making Babe uncomfortable — he likes his sister’s boyfriend, as far as Gene knows, and sure, his family weren’t as tight as Eugene’s but it wasn’t like they never invited him over. “Apparently dad, uh. Was wondering... if my girlfriend wanted to come.”

That stirs a reaction in Eugene, and he turns around in Babe’s arms. Babe is looking serious, mouth tight in a way that looks strange on his face. At the same time, there’s something subdued in his eyes, like worry, and Gene pauses for a second as he tries to figure out exactly what’s going on in Babe’s head right now.

There are two options here — either Babe doesn’t know how to handle Eugene being invited to dinner with his parents, or he doesn’t know how to handle the assumption that Gene is a woman. 

While the stakes are clearly different, it could be either one. Eugene knows not to trivialise any of Babe’s struggles, because the two of them handle the world differently. Specifically, they handle stress and anxiety differently.

Gene, from what’s probably a healthy mixture of personality, nurture and choice of career, knows he’s kind of… Notoriously calm when it comes to emergencies and problems. Babe, equally as notoriously, is definitely not.

However, Babe has never once questioned Eugene when he’s treated things Babe obviously found to be major (like that time Malarkey nearly lost an arm after falling down a fire escape) with relative calm, and Gene tries to show him the same respect. 

It doesn’t matter what the situation is, how Eugene would approach it or how serious Gene would or would not deem it, what matters is that this is big for Babe, and thus it’s big for Eugene, too.

So he settles for the neutral approach, which is simply saying “you don’t have a girlfriend, Edward.”

(Not once during his thought process does it occur to Eugene that he wouldn’t fit the label, even if he was a girl. He realises this later, at which point asking ‘ _ Heffron, am I your girlfriend? _ ’ isn’t really a solid conversation starter.)

Babe is looking at him carefully. “No, I don’t.”

Eugene returns the look. “So, what’d you tell them?”

“I told them I didn’t have a girlfriend,” Babe says and well, that’s good, Eugene guesses. He continues, “but I… I did say there is. Someone.” Gene feels a smile tug on the corners of his mouth and bumps their noses together. 

“Are you saying you want me to meet your parents, Edward?” The lost way Babe looks at him next makes Eugene feel like something got pulled out from under him.

Babe isn’t really a meek kind of person. He’s careful with people he’s not comfortable with, and likes Gene to push him around under certain… circumstances, sure, but Eugene has seen him throw a punch at a guy three times his weight for insulting his friends. He’s seen Babe get angry enough to throw a potted plant through a window, and he knows he watched over his little brother like a hawk when he was being bullied in high school.

Babe also isn’t a scared person. He’s not a timid person. He’s not a person Eugene has ever known to be prone to doubt, not about the things that matter. Babe can cry himself a headache because Webster doesn’t agree with him on which Disney princess is the best, but also march up and head-butt a nazi standing in the middle of a group of other nazis without so much as a fault in his step. 

Eugene didn’t see that last one personally, but he’s had a vivid picture painted by Guarnere, who’s never looked prouder for a reason to go to the emergency room.

However, Babe looks at Eugene now like he’s really freaking out, and it makes something twist in Gene’s stomach. He runs his hands up the length of Babe’s arm, making what he hopes is a soothing noise. 

He gives Babe space. Eugene isn’t exactly sure how to handle this situation, so he just waits the other man out. Eventually, Babe clears his throat and says with a hesitant voice, “I ain’t never brought someone to meet my parents.”

This, too, could go a number of ways, so Gene cops out for the neutral option again. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” He chews on his lip for a little while, looking at the space between them instead of Eugene’s eyes. Of course, that’s when the forgotten pot behind them decides to boil over. They both jump at the sudden hissing, crackling noise from the stove, Gene letting go of Babe with a curse and pulling the pot off the hob. 

As he does, Babe walks out of the kitchen without saying a word. Eugene turns the stove off, because fuck dinner, he has more important thing to worry about, and goes after him. Babe is doing a pretty bad attempt at pacing the living room, because he only walks along the length of the sofa twice before stopping to rub his hands over his face.

“Edward,” Eugene says carefully, feeling very unequipped to deal with this situation.

Here’s the thing: Gene has had his fair share of serious relationships — not that he knows exactly how he’d define things between Babe and him — and most of them have been with men. He’s had a number of variations of this conversation through the years.

However, the only thing that’s taught him is that every person who has to deal with the concept of bringing a boy home to their family does so differently. And he’ll never cease to get frustrated by it, because Eugene is a fixer. He doesn’t know how to cope with things he can’t solve or make better.

But this is simply not something he could ever fix. All he can do is be there, and hope it’s enough. So Gene just watches Babe take a deep breath and sit down on the sofa with a groan.

“I’m gay,” he says into the air, and Eugene slowly sits down next to him. “I’m not ashamed of it.”

“Yeah,” he says carefully, because he knows. Babe has never tried to hide it, neither through actions nor words — it had taken Gene all of fifteen minutes to figure it out when they first met, and an additional half-hour before Babe mentioned it in conversation. 

The first party the two of them organised was a very messy but fantastically fun pride party, because Babe had never celebrated Pride, while Eugene was still kind of new to Philadelphia and had no real friends outside of his classmates.

When they first met Webster, Babe and him had bonded through loud, drunken lament over the lack of cute boys in their life. Webster was, in hindsight, clearly frustrated that a certain Joseph Liebgott hadn’t looked his way the whole evening (or so he thought, the blind idiot) while Babe had been more generally miserable with not having had his ass grabbed for a while.

Babe wears booty shorts to the grocery store in the summer. His bike is painted with a rainbow gradient, a custom-made present from Bill. He celebrates June 26th like it’s his birthday. ‘Ashamed’ would never, in a million years, be a word Eugene would use to describe Babe Heffron.

But still, Babe’s voice is shaking as he repeats, “I’m not ashamed.”

“I know you’re not, Babe.”

“I’m— Fuck,” Babe says, rubbing one hand over the back of his head, pressing the other into a fist on one of his knees. “See, I’ve fucking told my parents, they fucking know, but it’s like… Sometimes, it’s like they’re pretending they don’t, or maybe they didn’t get it? I don’t fucking know.

“My folks love me. I know they do. Ma has been very— it took some time for her, but she broke off with half the family for my sake.” Eugene carefully puts a hand on Babe’s shoulder, and when the boy leans into it he scoots over until their sides are pressed together and Eugene can wrap an arm around him. “And dad, I mean… If he really had a problem, I know he’d have said so, you know? He’s had a lot of opportunities. It’s—“

Babe laughs, but it’s a tired, humourless sound. Eugene forces himself to just listen. Babe doesn’t need his help, or his opinion, just his company. He’ll have a whole life to speak, if he wants to, so for now he stays quiet. 

“It’s just a sad old story, but there was some fighting when everyone found out. Ma and Bella were always on my side, and so was Johnny, but dad and Joey and Jimmy were a bit… They didn’t know better, you know?”

Gene nods and Babe nods with him, like he needed the reassurance. “But my aunt made— She was— It was a whole thing,” he rambles out, like once he’s gotten started it’s hard to stop. Gene squeezes his shoulder and Babe takes another deep breath. “And we were all having dinner together this one time and she was a bit of a dick, honestly. Going on about— calling me— And then my dad just stood up and fucking, just like, read her the riot act, Gene. It was actually… I thought he was like a superhero when I was a kid, you know? And then things were kinda bad for a few years and then he did that. He fucking took me out of there and told her to go fuck herself for treating me like that.”

Eugene leans his head on Babe’s shoulder, rubbing his cheek against Babe’s shirt when he feels the side of Babe’s face press into him.

“And they, you know. They grew up in…” Babe clears his throat, Gene pressing an encouraging kiss into his collarbone. “I don’t really hold it against them. Yeah, they should have learned to be decent people earlier, but in the end they still chose me, you know? And that’s what matters, right?”

He’s quiet for a little while, like he’s looking for affirmation, and Gene isn’t one to hold out on him. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “We don’t get to decide who we are, but we get to decide who we want to be.”

“Yeah,” Babe mirrors, looking down at his hands where they’re twisting in his lap. “They love me. And they chose me. But every now and then they still say these things, like…” he trails off, and Eugene can practically hear him chewing his lip.

“Like asking if you have a girlfriend?” Eugene asks carefully, rubbing his hand over Babe’s arm slowly. Babe nods above him.

“Like… That. And I think it’s just habit, but a part of me is just, I don’t know. Scared? That they’re secretly holding out hope I’ll… That one day I’ll…” 

He sounds so young, suddenly, which surprises Eugene. They’re not that far apart in age, and regardless, Babe isn’t exactly a kid. Hell, Gene was younger than Babe is now when he left everything he’d ever known to move halfway across the country for school. And Babe Heffron has shown himself many a time to be the most grown-up 24-year-old Eugene has ever met, in a lot of ways.

Sure he lights up like a candle when he finds a gift in his cereal box and he loves dinosaur nuggets with a passion, but there’s something so unbelievably self-certain in the way he does it that requires more maturity than any serious façade Eugene has ever worn in his life. 

Babe communicates his feelings with a point-blank directness, regardless of whether they’re happy or sad or angry or frustrated. He’s never tried to hide anything because it’s unpleasant, not that Eugene knows of, and thanks to it they’ve rarely had to have any actual arguments. Babe doesn’t compromise on who he is for anyone, and he moves expertly between incredible childishness and stone-cold seriousness when the situations call for it.

He’s a bit of a good-natured laughing stock in their friend group, and he knows it, but Eugene has never seen Babe ever have to defend his own feelings because they all know to take him seriously when he wants them to. Boundaries have been set a long time ago, with a precision and non-negotiability that even impressed Lipton.

Okay, Eugene just went on a rant there, but his point is that the uncertainty now present in Babe’s voice is something Gene has never heard before. There has also never been a moment in his life where he’s felt a more dire need to protect something.

Gene has cared less about children coming out of car accidents than he cares about this moment. Is that fucked up? He doesn’t care.

Babe takes a deep breath and Eugene laces their fingers together. He wonders if Babe is aware he’d walk over fucking fire to make him happy right now.

“It’d be so real, you know, if I took— someone home,” Babe mumbles, stroking his free hand over their joint ones. “Does that make me a coward, Gene?”

“You’re not a coward,” Eugene says quietly, lifting his head so he can look at Babe. His expression is soft, and worried, and carefully determined. “It’s not cowardly, Babe. You’re the bravest person I know.”

“You really mean that?” Babe asks, and Gene just nods his head, sweeping his eyes over Babe’s face.

“Yeah. Yeah, I really do.” When Babe’s hand moves again, coming up to cup his cheek, Gene lets it. He allows Babe to stroke a thumb over his cheekbones, and there’s suddenly something heavy pressing inside of his sternum. “You’re not. I— you’re—”

Eugene can’t get fucking words out, and it’s embarrassing, but he can’t manage to find a way to tell Babe about it, about this feeling in his chest and how badly he just wants everything to be okay. To find a corner somewhere where he can keep this boy safe and happy, forever and always, with blankets and coffee and Babe looking over his shoulder as he slowly earns Gene’s trust to help make gumbo. 

He never wants to stop finding those stupid little notes in his lunch boxes wishing him a good day that he still has never caught Babe sneaking in there, or coming home to find blanket nests in random parts of the apartment, or having the air knocked out of him by a work-tired Babe flopping down on top of him. 

It’s the best thing to ever happen to him, the looks they shoot each other across crowded rooms, the way Babe seeks him out when they’re out and something funny happens that he needs to share with Eugene. The way Babe makes horrible coffee but Gene still drinks it every time, like how Babe sighs deeply whenever Eugene’s bookcase vomits over the living room but walks around the flat so careful to not disturb his notes.

Babe still thinks he’s always stealing Eugene’s shampoo, but in reality, he’s been using a different brand for months but buys the old one anyway because he loves the way it makes Babe smell. He thinks the same jig is up with the way Babe is just magically fine with his best blankets continually disappearing into Gene’s room to never re-emerge.

He’s in love.

Eugene is in love with Babe Heffron, and how the fuck has he not realised it yet? He’s been in love with Babe for, God, weeks? Months? Probably. 

Eugene’s in love with Babe. 

The realisation should hit him like a pile of bricks, but it doesn’t, and that’s odd by itself, right? There’s not a single part of him freaking out over it, because it’s just… It’s just right, isn’t it? It’s just what is meant to be.

It’s not earth-shattering, but neither are they. They’re just two boys, on a sofa, trying to take care of each other.

That’s enough for Gene. 

And when Babe gently presses their foreheads together and says, “me too, Gene,” he thinks it might be mutual. 

Eugene pulls back so they can kiss properly, and Babe lets him. It’s just a warm press of lips, steady and long but filled with so much promise. Babe rubs the tips of their noses together and Eugene takes hold of his head with both hands so he can run his thumbs over Babe’s soft cheekbones.

“I’m not ashamed,” Babe says quietly, like a callback. Eugene kisses him again.

“I know.”

“I’m just… I don’t care what anyone thinks, not really, but that’s not gonna stop them from thinking things, you know?”

“I know, Babe.” Babe chews on his lip, closing his eyes, and Gene presses a kiss to his nose. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter who knows or doesn’t know, and it doesn’t matter what they think. I only care about you.”

“You should care about yourself, too,” Babe says with a smile, and Eugene returns it happily.

“Ain’t that what I got you for?”

Babe looks up at Gene, finally, and there’s a lot there. Fear, happiness, excitement, insecurity, comfort. Something else he won’t put a word on. Not yet. Eugene doesn’t waiver. They hold each other’s gaze for a while, sharing a soft smile and a challenge at the same time. 

It’s oddly exhausting, but Gene isn’t going to back down for any money in the world.

“I guess it is,” Babe eventually says, sounding happy but looking very serious. “I know— I know I told my ma there… And we just, but I’m not. I don’t want her to meet you just yet.”

He doesn’t phrase it like a question, and Eugene doesn’t take it as one. There’s no input he has to give, not if it’s not asked of him. This decision is Babe’s, entirely, and Gene will wait for him to take all the time he needs. 

“Okay,” is all he says, thumbs stroking Babe’s cheeks again. “If, whenever— You just say the word, okay? I’ll follow your lead, Babe. Always.”

Babe does smile for real, then, and Eugene never thought he’d experience a moment too important to break it with a kiss, but here he is. Instead he closes his eyes, breathing in their shared space for a few heartbeats. Babe’s hands go around his waist, holding on. It’s safe. 

“I will,” Babe says softly, quietly. “One day I’ll tell you. I promise.”

Eugene does kiss him then, presses his lips to Babe’s forehead and then his lips. It’s a promise accepted, and he knows they’ll be okay. Eugene knows where he stands, and he knows where he has Babe. They’ll be just fine.

Eventually, the moment has to end, and it does so by Eugene kissing Babe’s temple and pulling back with the remnants of a smile on his face. “Come on,” he says, tugging Babe up with him, “we’ve got food to save, or I think Bill might actually murder us.”

Babe tugs him close with a laugh until he’s plastered against Gene’s back, presses his lips to Eugene’s neck and then lets himself be led back into the kitchen with a quip about people who cook and take themselves far too seriously. 

Eugene rolls his eyes. 

Their first bolognese isn’t exactly a resounding success, but it’s okay. They’ll just have to do it again, and then again, and again until they get it right. They have the rest of their lives. They’ll get the hang of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: Discussions of homophobic family dynamics. Basically, well. Babe grew up Catholic, and is also a gay man, and this fic delves into the combination of those two things a bit. Everything worked out in the end, kind of, but I still wanna put that out there as a CW.
> 
> * * *
> 
> A/N: : ))))))) <3 boys <3 in love <3 
> 
> Massive thanks and gratitude to Laura, my betareader and online soulmate extraordinaire, and Emma for also helping me read and check through this, as well as being the best support my ass could've asked for. i don't know what i'd do without you <3
> 
> okay so i have... a lot of feelings about this chapter. Imma not go into a rant in the notes, but just trust me there's been a lot of agonising happening on my end lmao. I hope it works, please let me know if it doesn't <3
> 
> While this is the end of YFESWMASLMS (and next time I'll pick a better title, i swear) it's not the end of CMS. Don't worry. I wouldn't leave you hanging like that and i have plans for the future :PPPP
> 
> Thank y'all for sticking with this even though my upload schedule kinda fell apart during this lol, it means a lot to me and all your comments are <3 <3 <3 gold worth.
> 
> [As always, I'm on tumblr](https://mariamegale.tumblr.com/), come say hi or talk kink or just scream at me for STILL not making them do the DTR. 
> 
> love you all <3


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